The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)(20)

To her relief, he was still handsome upon second glance. It wasn’t a face he had put on for them at the meeting; typically, masking charms of any kind were too strenuous to hold at unnecessary moments, like this one.

She felt, though, the little catch of an unseen mechanism when he spotted her; his defenses flying up.

“You don’t seem like the power-seeking type,” Parisa ventured, deciding to guess aloud what sort of man Dalton Ellery was. The assertion was so accurate as to be unremarkable; he had a studious look to him, and a solemnity that didn’t lend itself to the hypermale braggadocio of politicians and businessmen.

Her more pressing estimation—the more reckless guess—had been that candor might alternatively unnerve or embolden him. Either way would be enough to secure herself a place in his thoughts, in which case it would be like leaving the door open a crack behind her. She would more easily find her way back to his thoughts if she had been inside his head to begin with.

“Miss Kamali,” said Dalton, his tone evenly measured despite his initial surprise. “I cannot imagine I seem like much at all, given the inconsequence of our meeting.”

That was insufficiently informative, to say the least; neither unnerved nor emboldened, but merely factual.

She tried again, attempting, “I wouldn’t describe anything that just happened as inconsequential.”

“No?” He shrugged, inclining his head to dismiss himself.

“Well, perhaps you’re right. If you’ll excuse me—”

That wouldn’t do. “Dalton,” she said, and he glanced at her, giving her a look of intensely restrained politeness. “Surely it’s reasonable that I still have questions, despite your illuminating presentation.”

“Questions about…?”

“Everything. This Society, among other things.”

“Well, Miss Kamali, I’m afraid I can’t give you many answers beyond the ones I have already provided.”

If Parisa hadn’t already been aware how little men cared for evidence of female frustration, she might have grimaced. His indifference was deeply unhelpful.

“You,” she attempted, venturing a more effective topic. “You chose to do this once yourself, did you not?”

“Yes,” Dalton said, with an unspoken obviously.

“You chose this after one meeting?” she prompted. “Tapped by Atlas Blakely, sat in a room with strangers just as we were… and you simply agreed, no questions asked?”

Finally, a hitch of hesitation. “Yes. It is, as I’m sure you know, a compelling offer.”

“But then,” she pointed out, “you chose to stay beyond your initiation period.”

His brow twitched; another promising sign. “Does that surprise you?”

“Of course,” she said, relieved to see he was finally taking a more active role in the conversation. “Your pitch to us in that room was about power, wasn’t it? Returning to the world after initiation to take advantage of the resources allotted to the Society’s members,” she clarified, “and yet, given the opportunity to do so, you chose to remain here.” As a cleric, essentially. Some intermediary between the Alexandrian divine and their chosen flock.

“Someone once told me I don’t seem like the power-seeking type,” Dalton said.

She smiled. He didn’t know it yet, but she had found her footing.

“Well, I suppose I have little reason not to join,” Parisa replied with a shrug. Nothing, after all, was keeping her. “Only that I am not particularly enamored with teamwork.”

“You will be glad to have a team,” Dalton assured her. “The specialties are chosen to complement each other, in part. Three of you specialize in physicalities, while the other three—”

“So you know my specialty, then.”

He smiled grimly. “Yes, Miss Kamali.”

“So I suppose you don’t trust me?”

“Habitually, I refrain from trusting people like you,” said Dalton.

That, Parisa thought, was rather telling.

“I imagine you suspect me of using you, then,” she said.

His response was a wry half-smile with a clear enough translation: I know better than to answer that.

“Well,” she said. “Then I suppose I’ll have to prove you wrong.”

He gave her another curt nod. “Best of luck to you, Miss Kamali,” he said. “I have very high hopes for you.”

He turned, about to head for the corridor, when Parisa reached for his arm, catching him unawares just long enough to draw herself up on her toes, bracing her palms on his chest.

There would be the slightest pulse of contemplation here—the hardest work was managed in the moments before a thing was accomplished. The promise of her breath on his lips; the angle at which he viewed her, her dark eyes overlarge, and the way he would gradually become conscious of her warmth. He would smell her perfume now and catch hints of it again later, wondering if she had rounded a nearby corner or recently been in a room. He would catalogue the sensation of her smallness in the same incongruous moment he registered the pressure of her presence; the immediacy of her, the nearness, would momentarily unsettle him, and in that moment, lacking the presence of mind to recoil, he would permit himself to imagine what might happen next.